Parallels Announces Game Changing Innovations to Help Small and Medium Businesses Seamlessly Use Bundled Cloud Services

Parallels,
the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today announced that
small and medium business (SMB) adoption of cloud services from its
partners using Parallels Automation and the Application
Packaging Standard (APS) grew by more than 80 percent in 2012. This
growth was fueled by SMBs who are now using an average of four cloud
applications each, along with more than 50 percent of the top 30 global
telecommunications providers now using the Parallels cloud service
delivery platform. This is in addition to the 9,000 service providers
and more than 50,000 web designers and developers also using the
company’s software to serve millions of SMBs.

To continue enabling service providers to grow and increase their share
of the SMB cloud market, which is expected to mushroom to $95B by 20151,
Parallels is unveiling number of new products including a major update
to the Application Packaging Standard. APS 2.0 now includes a pluggable
single sign-on, service bus architecture, and customizable user
interface enabling service providers to seamlessly offer differentiated
bundles of cloud services with an easy purchase and activation
experience. APS 2.0 will be integrated in Parallels
Automation 5.5, which is expected to ship later this year, and will
include more than 30 back-office improvements and new services such as
support for Microsoft
Lync 2013 Hosting Pack.

To help service providers manage their SMB customers’ accelerating
storage needs, Parallels announced Parallels
Cloud Server and Parallels Cloud Storage. Parallels Cloud Storage
turns existing unused disk space in servers into scalable,
high-availability and high-performance distributed storage. It is now
available as part of Parallels Cloud Server, which brings Parallels
Virtuozzo Containers together with the company’s world-class
hypervisor technology into a single product.

In addition to these product announcements, Parallels also released
usage data for its products. First, Parallels
Plesk Panel 11 is the fastest
adopted version in the company’s history. Second, more than 100
Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have joined the APS ecosystem with
new services in 2012. Finally, the Parallels service provider ecosystem
has grown by more than 450 new partners over the past year. These
updates combined with the new product announcements continue to make
Parallels the catalyst for service providers to accelerate cloud
adoption by SMBs.

“Parallels mission is to help service providers profit from the cloud.
2012 has been a breakthrough year for us in this regard,” said Birger
Steen, CEO of Parallels. “We have assisted service providers on all
continents in crafting and executing cloud strategies, and we have
enabled hundreds of new, useful cloud services for SMBs. We have
continued extending our cloud service delivery platform: Parallels Cloud
Storage dramatically reduces the cost of providing highly available
storage. Parallels Automation 5.5 with APS 2.0 lets service providers
deliver a seamless experience for SMBs buying multiple cloud services,
with a library of more than 400 apps to choose from. We are more
optimistic about our partners’ success, as well as our own, than ever
before.”

“In working with hosters and service providers since the industry
emerged in the late ’90s, we have seen the acceleration of demand to
create, deliver and manage bundled services for SMBs,” said Serguei
Beloussov, Chairman and Chief Architect of Parallels. “APS 2.0 is the
game-changing technology that will make this happen across all Parallels
products.”

“SMBs are adopting cloud services at an accelerating rate, and they also
have more choice than ever before in where to buy their cloud services,”
said Philbert Shih, Managing Director of Structure
Research. “If service providers expect to stay relevant, they need
to have access to actionable market research and analysis, the right
enabling technologies, and a powerful partner ecosystem so they stay
ahead of the competition. Parallels brings all of these requirements
together in an integrated fashion specifically designed to help service
providers succeed.”

These announcements are being made in Las Vegas this week at Parallels
Summit 2013. The event addresses all aspects of the company’s
service provider enablement solutions and business: Parallels service
delivery software, expansion of the widest cloud services catalog, the
broadest partner ecosystem, proprietary industry research and analysis,
and a suite of go-to-market consulting and implementation services.

"During our evaluation process, it quickly became clear that Parallels
was the only vendor that could offer us a proven off-the-shelf product
and deploy it within a few months. In addition to the Parallels
Automation platform, Parallels was able to provide us with the business
consulting services we needed to configure it optimally for our offering
and advise us on how to take it to market effectively in multiple
countries. The fact that Parallels also has a very strong ecosystem of
third-party partners, with applications that we can quickly and easily
add to the platform over time, was also a key factor in our decision,"
said Rolf Magne Aasen, CTO at Telenor
Business Internet Services." Throughout the entire process,
Parallels has gone the extra mile to fulfill our requirements, and the
team's ‘can do attitude’ enables rapid time to market across multiple
geographies. We simply could not have met our demanding launch schedule
without them, as well as develop such a complete offering for our next
wave."

Next Generation of Cloud Service Delivery Software from Parallels

Parallels also announced new automation, virtualization and cloud
storage products in addition to comprehensive enhancements to Parallels
control panel products at Parallels Summit.

With Parallels software, service providers can manage infrastructure,
automate provisioning and accurately bill for the widest range of cloud
services for SMBs, while offering best-in-class control panels for
self-service for the not only the provider but also for their resellers,
IT administrators and end users. With a complete stack of cloud
enablement software, Parallels can help service providers of any size
offer SMBs the cloud services they need, ranging from shared hosting to
hosted communications and collaboration to infrastructure-as-a-service
to software-as-a-service. Products highlighted at the Summit included:

“APS 2.0 takes the ability to integrate cloud services and create a
seamless, unified experience for SMBs to the next level. It goes beyond
software installation and defines a bus allowing independent cloud
applications to interact,” said Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid.
“We are pleased to be in the early adopter program for APS 2.0.”

Announcing Parallels Automation 5.5: Parallels
Automation 5.5 is expected to ship later this year and will have
APS 2.0 built in and fully integrated. Navigation across billing and
provisioning has been streamlined for an easy purchase and activation
experience. The set of RESTful APIs has been expanded. New and updated
core services include Linux and Windows Hosting, Microsoft Exchange
2013, Microsoft Lync 2013 and Cloud Infrastructure. This makes
Parallels Automation the platform of choice for service providers and
developers to innovate and differentiate.

"Parallels Automation combined with the APS standard, managed by KPN
Software Online, form the underlying core technologies of KPN's
Cloud Store," said KPN Omar Benameur." By eliminating the complexity
of order delivery and payment processing, various KPN Business Units
including KPN Wholesale, E-Plus and Base are able to aggressively
recruit both service providers and ISVs to build out their own
customized and diverse cloud marketplaces."

"Parallels Cloud Server changes the game for VPS and cloud hosting,”
said David Collins, CTO of HostGator. “The way Parallels Cloud Storage
utilizes unused disk space on the servers is the missing piece of the
puzzle.”

Announcing Parallels Cloud Server:Parallels
Cloud Server now makes it easy to offer all cloud infrastructure
services customers want. It includes Parallels
Virtuozzo Containers together with our world-class hypervisor
technology and Parallels Cloud Storage, combing all of the pieces to
enable best-in-class infrastructure services.

"We've been a global partner since 2005, offering a variety of
virtualization solutions from Parallels in order to provide our
customers with greater scalability," said Nathan Day, Chief Scientist
for SoftLayer
Technologies. "By extending our portfolio to include Parallels Cloud
Server, we're enabling our customers to obtain high availability servers
while reducing maintenance costs."

Announcing Parallels Plesk Automation:Parallels
Plesk Automation is a scalable, multi-server cloud automation
solution enabling a seamless growth path for Parallels Plesk Panel
customers to scale to thousands of servers and a wide range of
services. It also provides the ability to centrally manage end
customers.

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

“Never before has there been a company with a product line that can meet
every cloud and hosting need from the small single domain on a virtual
private server, to a provider that needs centralized management for many
diverse servers, to the full customized automation platforms for the
largest enterprise customer,” said Stephen Evans, Director of
Operations, APYL
Inc. “With Parallels Plesk Automation, Parallels gives us the
ability to grow and excel like never before.”

Parallels Presence Builder: With Parallels
Presence Builder, service providers
can attract new customers and differentiate their offerings. Parallels
Presence Builder has hundreds of industry-specific site designs for
SMB businesses along with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. In
addition to integration with Parallels Plesk Panel, Parallels Plesk
Automation and Parallels Automation, it now supports cPanel
and provides full set of APIs to integrate with any in-house system.

“Parallels Presence Builder gives small business owners with no
technology background at all the ability to quickly and easily create
professional-looking websites,” said Kathy Nelson, Chief Decision Maker
at Ovaleye.
One of Ovaleye’s customers is a small business called Bellefleur,
and the founder and owner, Jennifer Carroll, added, “With Parallels
Presence Builder, you can build something yourself that looks good,
feels good and gives your customers a good idea of who you are. You can
customize it, brand it and get your point across without a big price
tag.”

“Our partnership with Parallels, in particular with respect to the
deployment of Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers,
provides us with an efficient and cost-effective way to introduce new
upstream services and grow our revenue opportunities,” said Narayanan
Ganeshan, Senior Manager, Cloud Operations, CtrlS.
“It also allows us to offer our customers a value-added product that
helps them to boost their profitability and operational efficiency.”

New APS Certification Program for ISVs Supports Vast Expansion of
Parallels Ecosystem

To provide users with the best possible user experience across this
growing and diverse array of APS applications supporting Parallels
products, the company is announcing a new Parallels APS certification
program for ISVs. This program will also provide enhanced market
opportunities for those ISVs who demonstrate via certification that
their products have the highest possible quality of support for
Parallels products. The certification program is a component of the
newly launched Parallels Cloud Services Developer partner program.
Details of the new programs will be available on theParallels
PartnerNet portal, which features news,
forums, go-to-market tools and assets, training, and developer product
licenses.

“With more than 80,000 business customers now relying on Mozy for cloud
backup, we have become more focused than ever on selling Mozy through
the channel – and our recently revamped Mozy Reseller Program and
channel-friendly pricing and terms are a testament to this,” said Simon
Kingston, Director, Global Partners at Mozy. “Working with Parallels APS
technology allows us to tap into the large and growing Parallels
installed base of service providers. It’s very easy for service
providers to include Mozy in their offering.”

"The combination of Parallels Automation and APS makes of the Hosted365
bundle the ultimate reseller opportunity," said Marco Houwen, CEO at
LuxCloud. "No fewer than seven APS packages are used inside the
Hosted365 bundle to give customers access to a complete set of
applications, e-mail, website and Sharepoint."

“McAfee and its partners are working diligently to help SMBs be secure
with simple-to-adopt cloud security solutions,” said Craig Parrish, Vice
President of SMB sales, McAfee. “Parallels Application Packaging
Standard is compatible with McAfee cloud-based solutions including
McAfee SaaS Email Protection, Email Archiving, Email Encryption, Web
Protection and Endpoint, to simplify and automate cloud services
enabling providers to leverage the cloud for profitability and security.”

“Microsoft Lync APS integration with Parallels Automation is helping
service providers accelerate time to revenue with faster deployments and
scalable multi-tenant offer delivery,” said Laura Howard, Sr. Director
Lync Service Provider Engineering Team, Microsoft. “Service providers
can now deliver rich Lync functionality, typically available to larger
enterprises, to their SMB customers as a hosted service”

Click
to download additional comments from Parallels partners about the
products and services discussed at Parallels Summit.

Research and Consulting Practice Highlights

Parallels primary and proprietary research estimates that the global SMB
market grew 30 percent in 2012 to $45 billion, with strong growth across
all categories of cloud services. The market is expected to expand at a
28 percent CAGR to $95 billion by the end of 2015. Parallels released
these statistics along with additional in-depth SMB market analysis in
the latest Parallels
SMB Cloud Insights™ reports. The research series has now entered its
third year of covering the SMB cloud market. The new 2013 reports
include updated SMB cloud purchasing profiles for the United States,
Brazil, Mexico and the world. In addition, this year Parallels has
provided its readers with even more advanced analytics tools including a
Kano analysis and transformed this research into e-learning modules that
will be made available at Parallels Cloud University throughout 2013.

In cases where service providers would like Parallels to take its
research and insights deeper into their organizations, Parallels
Cloud Accelerations Services provides a suite of professional
services designed to define, build, launch and grow a service provider’s
cloud business. The suite is honed from hundreds of deployments of
Parallels cloud enablement solutions. Parallels Cloud Acceleration
Services delivers cloud product management and go-to-market consulting,
giving service providers’ critical business thinking and analysis to
help create a differentiated portfolio and customer experience.

About Parallels

Parallels is a worldwide leader in hosting and cloud service enablement
and desktop virtualization. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing
company with more than 900 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.

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